butswana

read it and weep:

<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70277,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70277,00.html</a>

Shadowy Man

What does it mean for a law to reaffirm an older law???

And how do you determine what constitutes a religious headdress. In my opinion, a Chicago Cubs cap can count as a religious headdress - you have to have faith to be a Cubs fan!

Corwin

No.... you just have to have mindless devotion and pure self-delusional hope in the absense of any solid reason to believe except brainless emotionalism.

Oh.... wait....

RufusAtticus

Too bad the legislation itself contains erroneous rational and absurd history.

penumbra

This is idiocy at it's best. Even the judge that dissented from the 9th Circuit Court's majority opinion admitted in his dissent that the phrase violated the establishment clause. His only argument (and not a very good one) was that the violation wasn't serious enough to warrant judicial action.

Did any of these bozo's even read the damn court ruling?

RufusAtticus

Hah, when was the last time politicians let a little something like education get in their way of votewhoring.

Buffman

Our fellow countrymen and women voted these people into power. What does that tell you?

OK! Now! What can be done about it? A couple of thousand knowledgeable and concerned folks marching on Washington isn't going to get it done.
Armed rebellion isn't possible. If an organization as big and as financially well healed as the Democratic Party can't get it done, what can a handful of poorly financed, unorganized, untrained, non-believers do to help our neighbors to return to a more rational path for America? Perhaps more people should be paying closer attention to exactly how a small group of inerrant bible believers cancelled our Constitution and stole America from the majority.

It all starts with an endemic self-interest (materialism) and creating a national fear of external enemies that permits the illusion of security (U.S. Patriot Act/Homeland Security) to outweigh the belief in individual liberty. Combine this with control of the media (propaganda) and the timidity of the most accurately informed to speak out, and you have GWB in the White House and his Bible replacing the Constitution in the rotunda.

The real war, the real threat, is not with/from external Islamist terrorists. It is the one that was publicly declared by a radical group of American, Christian, inerrant bible believers. And in my opinion, as the situation currently stands, they have won. (My guess is that we will now begin to see the struggle between Christian sects and denominations for controlling pre-eminence.)

All the marching and knashing of teeth are worthless when the reigns of power (the government, especially the judiciary) is in control of any one religious sect or demonimation. Our founding and government framing fathers knew that based on history and their personal experiences. Evidently too many Americans have never experienced, or have forgotten, those lessons. Hopefully they will relearn them before the Dictatorship of the Supernatural has destroyed our will and ability to remain a democratic, pluralistic, federal republic.

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: Buffman ]</p>

Stephen Maturin

The religious headdress stuff is new, so to that extent the bill qualifies as substantive amendment to <a href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/4/4.html" target="_blank">former 4 U.S.C. 4</a>. Other than that, the bill doesn't mean jack shit beyond serving as an example of the maxim that allowing oneself to be out-Jebused and/or out-flaged is political suicide nowadays.

Anyone who's interested can find the full text of the bill, including the infamous sixteen Congressional "findings," by going <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/" target="_blank">here</a> and typing S2690 in the bill number search engine.

Grad Student Humanist

Exactly!

The American people voted in overwhelming numbers a couple of weeks ago for all of these religionists and Xtian fundies. Now that they're firmly in power, what else can we expect?

I no longer blame the GOP for this. They're just shameless vote whores. The sad truth is that the vast majority of Americans love their religious myths and honestly think that without religion society would devolve into a chaotic and immoral mess. If things keep going the way they're going in this country I'm leaving and moving to Europe where long ago they told the religionists to shove it and keep their religious beliefs to themselves and out of the government. Life is too short to engage in a never-ending power struggle with the religionists, fundies and those who go along with it.

Toto

Here's the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=59&t=000731&p=" target="_blank">previous thread</a> on this issue, with the discussion of religious headgear (for Kokopeli fans)